Recent advances in the development of hearing protection devices open new fields of applications on the battlefield. While the TCAPS (Tactical Communication And Protective Systems) protect against acute acoustic traumas, they maintain information relative to the acoustic environment of the soldiers. Today, these systems are efficient for both hearing protection and communication. We propose to use the microphones equipping the TCAPS headsets in order to detect and localize shooters on the battlefield. The microphone underneath the hearing protection is used in order to detect the shock and muzzle waves generated by supersonic shots. A meshed network between the TCAPS deployed on the field allows transmitting asynchronous information relative to the detected waves to data fusion nodes that allow estimating the shooter’s position. Solutions are proposed in order to compensate the effects of the presence of the head between the microphones underneath the hearing protection. Results concerning the estimation of the time difference of arrival of a transient wave in free field and in the presence of an artificial head are presented. The data fusion process is tested thanks to simulations in various deployment configurations.

The present study focuses on the acoustical detection and localisation of shots using a network of wireless asynchronous acoustic nodes. The first sections describe the detection and classification schemes of the developed real-time acoustic nodes and the asynchronous shooter localisation principle. This localisation method is evaluated in free field and in complex propagation conditions, where obstacles affect the propagation of the muzzle blast and shock waves. More than 600 shots with calibre 5.56 to 12.7 mm weapons at distances varying from 100 to 800 m constitute the database used for the evaluation of the localisation performance. It shows that the localisation of shooters in complex environments is possible when the group of acoustic nodes is near to the shot trajectory.